Author Archives: skook

Progress Report – Oz Squad Novel Illustrations

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So Steve Alhquist has written an Oz Squad novel. I’m not going to say anything about the book itself at the moment other than that I think it’s pretty good. And I think it’s a good way to introduce Oz Squad to readers who wouldn’t think of picking up a comic.

I’m providing the color cover and an as yet undetermined number of interior illustrations. I’m guessing that there will be at least 24 and perhaps as many as 48 illustrations total. I’m going to have to figure that out as I go but, for tracking purposes I’m going to figure on 36 illustrations as a good estimate. Right now we’re expecting the illustrations to be in black and white so that keeps the stages to Inked, Penciled and Roughed.

Here’s where the Oz Squad Novel Illustration project stands this morning –
Cover – Inked. Additional Design and Text to Come.
Illustrations –
Penciled – 2
Yet To Be Started – 34

Well, that’s depressing.

And where are we today with the Oz Squad Comic?
Finished – 12 pages
Inked – 7 pages
Penciled – 17
Roughed – 9

Looks exactly like yesterday. So far so unimpressive.

See you tomorrow with a status report on The Black Seal comic.

Progress Report – Oz Squad – The Comic

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So. Oz Squad. Getting the art finished on this project is the main reason I’m going to be posting progress reports. It’s been years in the works. It doesn’t matter how little time I’ve got to do art or how often I get paying jobs or whether I have other projects that are easier to work on or … whatever. This one has got to be done. Steve has sent the draft for another issue and he has an outline for more beyond that.

Here the criteria I’m using. A page is Finished if the coloring is done and I’ve sent it to Jason for lettering. A page is Inked if I’ve scanned it into the computer and I’m ready to color it. A page is Penciled if I’m ready ink it. A page is Roughed if all the images are in place and I’m ready to pencil it. If one panel isn’t colored or inked or penciled or roughed the page isn’t done and I can’t count it as such.

This issue of Oz Squad is a 48 pager. Here’s where it stands at this writing –
Finished – 12 pages
Inked – 7 pages
Penciled – 17
Roughed – 9

Tomorrow I’ll post the status again. And I’ll post the status of the Oz Squad novel. The what? Stay tuned.

Updates, Incentives and Priorities

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So, new template, new post.

I’m somewhat reluctant to spend time writing this post when I could be working on one of the projects that I’m about to mention. Still, if this works out I’ll be making more progress on said projects. I seem to be a loner by nature. I enjoy my own company and rarely feel lonely either when I’m alone or when I’m in a crowd. I did notice fairly early on that I’m healthier and happier when I get regular interaction with friends and relatives and I get more done if I have a busy schedule that I have pay attention to. So I’m back to posting even if I haven’t yet got any art scanned to discuss.

I’ve got a number of illustration projects on my table in various states of completion. As the day job has gotten less predictable (I work seven days a week – sometimes for an hour or two, sometimes for 12 or more hours) I’ve been having to pay more attention to scheduling the illustration projects to be sure that they happen.

I’ve got five main illustration projects. In order of importance they are:
1. Oz Squad – the Comic
2. Oz Squad – the Novel
3. Short Comic for the Black Seal
4. Stumptown Minicomic
5. Oziana Submission
6. 2011 Blog Fiction Project
7. DavidLeeIngersoll.com
8. Skook Sketchblog

Starting tomorrow I’ll be posting daily reports on each project. I hate to admit it but one of the best ways for me to get me to do something is to regularly tell people what I’m doing. I get embarrassed if I don’t have anything new to report.

See you tomorrow!

Time for Another Break

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I’ve come to the end of my latest set of scans and haven’t had a chance to get any others into the computer yet so it must be time for a breather. I’m not sure when I’ll start posting again. I doubt if this will be a long break, probably no longer than a couple of weeks; definitely not a month. I’ve got a half dozen projects that I’m in the middle of (seriously) and the day job is keeping me well occupied but it shouldn’t be too long before I’m back with more random sketches and illustrations. Until then I’m sure you’ll find other things to keep you amused. I hear it’s summer out in the real world.

Cheers!

Tintin Looks Back In A Haze

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My friend was actually looking for a specific image of Tintin when he wrote me. He sent me a description but once I decided to do a Tintin painting I didn’t refer back to it.

“It was Tintin at 40 years old or so, trench coat, galloise cigarette drooping, balding, hard-eyed and hard-boiled. It was an amazing image that made me what to know what he’d gotten into that had crushed his boyhood optimism and embittered him.”

Dang. Sounds like there’s another painting of Tintin to be done down the line.

When I originally planned the painting I thought I’d add skin and hair colors in Photoshop. I only got to the hair before I decided to stop. I think even adding the hair color might have been a mistake.

Tintin in the Land of the Middle Aged

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A friend wrote to me recently asking if I’d ever done a drawing of Tintin as a burned out middle aged man. I’ve done a few sketches of Tintin before but not as an adult much less a worn out one. It seemed like a good subject for a watercolor so …

Springheel Jack

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Another recent watercolor painting. I’m planning to keep practicing with the medium until I either get bored or need to buy more watercolor paper. This was going to be an illustration of Springheel Jack but I got a little carried away and gave him a blazing head instead of just glowing eyes.

Family of Frankensteins – the Noodling

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I said yesterday that I usually have to force myself to stop working on an illustration otherwise I run the risk of noodling at it until I’ve messed it up. One of the dangers of working on art in Photoshop is that you can noodling on the piece in even greater detail and far longer than you can a piece on paper or canvas. With all the layers and the ability to undo the things you don’t like you spend hours on some fussy bit, decide you don’t like it, delete it and then spend a few more hours fussing at it differently. Because I know how easily I can get caught doing that I try to finish the majority of my illustrations before I scan them into the computer. I want to use Photoshop as sparingly as possible.

For this piece I used the program to bump up the color and to add some highlights that I didn’t manage to do on the original. I like the more vibrant (garish) colors but I’m not sure that this is actually an improvement over the original painting.

Family of Frankensteins

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I finished this painting recently. It had been a few weeks since I participated in the Watercolor Course and I wanted to see what I could do without the time limit imposed by being in class. It took a couple of weeks to do from start to finish – mostly because I could only work on it a bit at a time. Unless the effect you’re going for is a big smeary mess you need to wait for the paints to dry between layers. So I’d get ten or twenty minutes of painting in each day until I finally decided I should stop. I’m a big noodler when I’m doing art so I generally have to decide that I’ve done enough at some point and walk away. I’ve learned that I can mess up a piece with too much noodling.